The Toys

Heartbeat Sensor

Although the Rainbow Six games bill themselves as definitive shooter simulations with ultra-realism, one of the liberties the game takes with realism is the use of the heartbeat sensor. In previous Rainbow Six games, you'd get a mini map at the bottom of your screen, and the heartbeat sensor would show the locations of live targets (friendly and foe alike without differentiating) on that map. In Raven Shield, you no longer get a mini map, but the heartbeat sensor is still in the game. When you wear it, you see from the first person view little pings from your viewpoint that represent a person's heartbeat through a wall. The sensor allows you to view which heartbeats are pounding faster, and which are slower. Although it's not a hard and fast rule, generally the hostage heartbeats are faster because they are under stress, while the terrorists' heartbeats are slower. This isn't the case 100% of the time though, as some terrorists will be jumpy or nervous and also have a fast heartbeat represented on your sensor. Another advantage to this new style of heartbeat sensor is that you can tell relative elevations of the people in the room. Heartbeat closer to the ground? Maybe it's a hostage being forced to lie on the ground…or maybe it's a terrorist sitting on the floor watching TV.

Heavy armor slows you down

Grenades

There are several different kinds of grenades in the game - flashbang, tear gas, fragmentation, and smoke. The latter two are pretty self-explanatory in how they affect the game, but when you get hit with a flash, Raven Shield introduces a number of unique effects to the player both visually and aurally. Depending on the degree to which you got flashed (staring right at it? Turned away?), your vision will go all white and then fade back in slowly, just as you remember from Counter-Strike. However, your audio goes out as well, fading back in slowly with a ringing sensation. Also as your vision comes back online, your crosshair is unstable from dizziness, floating about, and the viewpoint is fuzzy, leaving a trail effect on the screen as you mouse around. The tear gas has a similar effect, creating a blurry view on the screen as you "tear up." It will also force you to stop moving once in a while to cough if you get caught in a gas cloud. The developers were so hardcore about getting the effects just right that some of them allowed SWAT trainers to actually flashbang and/or tear gas them to see how it really feels!

Overall there are a lot of great new enhancements to look forward to in Raven Shield. Fans of traditional shooters will like the change over to the Unreal engine, as it gives the game a more fluid feel. Longtime fans of the Rainbow Six games will love all the new enhancements and appreciate the extra time put into the AI of teammates and foes alike. If all goes according to plan, Raven Shield will solidify the Rainbow Six franchise as the definitive tactical shooter simulation.